US medical flights take Iraqi insurgents

[Barrett808]

Source: Associated Press

US medical flights take Iraqi insurgents
By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD - Two Army helicopters land after a roadside blast, rescuing wounded American soldiers — and one Iraqi insurgent. Inside the Iraqi's pocket, a medic finds the trip wire used to set off the bomb.

The scene — which occurred back in January — is part of a little-known U.S. mission amid Iraq's mayhem: ferrying injured prisoners along with soldiers from the clashes and ambushes.

Such flights have been aspects of battle for decades, but in Iraq they also serve as a bridge between very different eras of warfare.

The emergency care for the prisoners falls under the long-standing wartime codes of the Geneva Conventions. But the high-stakes pressures to wring information from them highlight the struggles against shadowy extremists in Iraq that still appear capable of striking at will in many areas.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070511/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_saving_the_enemy

[Kagemusha]

1. Something in that article set me off.

Al Qaeda... are TERRORISTS. Where the HELL do people get off lording it over how US troops can't expect medical care at Al Qaeda's hands? It's not an army!! It's not even an enemy army!! It's a bunch of armed civilians, enemy combattants, guerillas, terrorists. That we have to compare ourselves to them to look good is depressing.